tablets of painted or stained wood, on which were Chinese letters glittering with gold.  This departure from the primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, “somewhat on the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[32] was a radical one in the ninth century.  The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still more radical and even scandalous innovation.

Shint[=o] Buried in Buddhism.

So complete was the victory of Riy[=o]buism, that for nearly a thousand years Shint[=o] as a religion, except in a few isolated spots, ceased from sight and sank to a mere mythology or to the shadow of a mythology.  The very knowledge even of the ancient traditions was lost in the Buddhaized forms in which the old stories[33] were cast, or in the omnipresent ritual of the Buddhist tera.

Yet, after all, it is a question as to which suffered most, Buddhism or Shint[=o].  Who can tell which was the base and which was the true metal in the alloy that was formed?  The San Kai Ri shows how superstitious manifold became imbedded in Buddhism.  It was not alone through the Shingon sect, which K[=o]b[=o] introduced, that this Yoga or union came.  In the other great sect called the Tendai, and in the later sects, more especially in that of Nichiren, the same principle of absorption was followed.  These sects also adopted many elements derived from the god-way and thus became Shint[=o]ized.  Indeed, it seems certain that that vast development of Japanese Buddhism, peculiar to Japan and unknown to the rest of the Buddhist world, scouted by the Southern Buddhists as dreadful heresy, and rousing the indignation of students of early Buddhism, like Max Mueller and Professor Whitney, is largely owing to this attempted digestion of Japanese mythology.  The anaconda may indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least made helpless before the destroying hunter.  When sweet potatoes and pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on the table, it is hard to tell whether it is tuber or hollow fruit, subterranean or superficial growth, that we are eating.  So in Riy[=o]bu, whether it be most imo or kabocha is a fair question.  If the Buddhism in Japan did but add a chapter of decay and degradation to the religion of the Light of Asia, is not this owing to the act of K[=o]b[=o]—­justified indeed by those who imitated his example, yet hardly to be called honest?  A stroke of ecclesiastical dexterity, it may have been, but scarcely a lawful example or an illustrious and commendable specimen of syncretism in religion.